Heartbreaking result of strawberry sabotage

by Ben Graham

14th Sep 2018 9:24 AM

IT HAS been a week which Kevin Tran will not forget anytime soon.

The Queensland farmer and owner of the Berrylicious and Berry Obsession brands has seen his company's name splashed all over the national news alongside horror stories of sickening discoveries inside his fruit.

Queensland chief health officer Jeanette Young has also given a fresh warning - advising anyone who bought Berrylicious and Berry Obsession strawberries in Queensland, NSW or Victoria early last week to cut them in half before eating them.

But as worried customers throw their berries in the bin, the heartbreaking effect of the major recall on Aussie farmers has been laid bare.

This week’s recall has devastated strawberry farmers.

As Mr Tran was papped by the press at his farm in Wamuran, Queensland yesterday, he said he just wants answers like everybody else does.

"I don't know, because the problem is there's so many people handling the fruit all the time, and packing, so I cannot say where it happened," he told a Channel 9 reporter.

"I don't know anything, at this stage, I don't know anything, I'm like you guys, I want to find out."

The major scare has not only damaged his farm's reputation, but also the entire strawberry industry which is suffering because of low prices.

It couldn't have come at a worse time for the industry as supermarket giants, Coles and Woolies have been flogging the popular berries for just $1 a punnet.

The bargain basement prices are due to a record oversupply of smaller berries that do not meet retailers' demand for extra large fruit.

So, after months of picking and planting, devastated farmers have seen hundreds of thousands of berries simply go to waste.

Police have been investigating at the Berrylicious and Berry Obsession farms. Picture: Tara Croser

Another Wamuran grower, Mandy Schultz, took to Facebook before the needle contamination fears kicked in to say she received a phone call from a wholesale agent to say he was not accepting anything but extra large strawberries.

After the devastating phone call she walked through her family's packing shed that same night and filmed the trays of rejected small berries that had been emptied into drums for disposal.

Another punnet of strawberries inserted with needles was also discovered yesterday by a Gladstone woman whose son bit into a contaminated berry he'd taken to school in his lunch box.

Realising her son had strawberries in his lunch box she immediately called his school.

"I said I need you to stop him from eating the strawberries. It wasn't five minutes later they rang back and said it was too late, he'd actually bitten into it," she told 9 News.

"Luckily he pulled it back out of his mouth and told the teacher."

"We want everybody to check their strawberries before consuming them … just cut them up, have a look," Supt Lawrence said.

The Queensland Strawberry Growers Association suspects a former staff member is behind the contamination.

"At this time, (we) have reason to suspect that a disgruntled ex-employee may have orchestrated the occurrence, wherein sewing needles were found in a number of strawberries, in Queensland and Victoria," a statement from the association said.